Hello. Before we get into today's episode, I just wanted to give you a little reminder, if you're listening in real time that my frenzy to focus course is currently open. It's an eight week course for moms in business to get control of their time, and spend it on what's important. And the course closes on Tuesday, the Eighth of March at 7pm. So you've got a few days to get involved and sign up. today's podcast episode is about how to take control of your reactions. When have you overreacted? It's probably a bit of a pattern. Is it a similar situation every time it happens, what makes you feel under pressure, what makes you feel a little threatened, these are probably the situations where it's most difficult to control your reaction. For me, it's getting the kids ready in the morning, I feel like every few days, it just gets a little too hard. And someone gets angry normally me. And in trying to just rush and get everyone out the door and get everyone organized. One small thing can really trigger this huge overreaction to what's going on. And I get so angry that my time is sort of being disrespected, which is completely unreasonable for a three year old and a six year old. To be actually disrespecting my time. Obviously, there's some other things going on there. But over time, I've developed this sort of system that quote unquote, works for me, because in the end, we get in the car, and everything's fine. So I'm kind of telling my brain that this is a worthwhile way to deal with this problem. When something happens to you, there's only really so much of the situation that you can actually perceive in one go. So when the trigger moment happens, when someone does something that causes a reaction in you, you are not actually able to perceive every single thing that's going on in this situation, your brain is only only able to analyze a small percentage of all the information that's coming at it. So I think the estimate somewhere like 11 million bits of information are coming at you every second and you can only perceive seven, five to seven pieces of the information. You can't perceive every single thing that's going on in that moment, when you have a reaction, you're really just going off a few things. And your mind is working really quickly to come up with a reaction. So that you can do whatever is required to get out of this situation. So it's kind of generalizing information. It's distorting what's going on, it's deleting things. So in the kids example, perhaps my mind isn't really looking at like whether this is just once this week that this has happened straightaway, things like this happens all the time. That would be a generalization. Or I might be distorting the situation thinking, you know, attributing kind of adult processes to my children who obviously aren't, you know, out to get meal a causing me a survival situation. And I might be deleting things. So I might not have noticed that the kids actually did do a really good job of getting most of their things ready, I only noticed the one thing that they haven't done, which is the thing that triggers my reaction. So the other thing to think about is that you can only perceive these situations through your own lens. So you can't perceive something from someone else's point of view. It's always being filtered through your own lens. So it's going through the beliefs that you have your experiences, like things that your mom told you things that you saw on TV so long ago that you can't even remember that have formed these deep connections in your brain that are kind of the basis for these reactions. In that moment, it takes a lot of effort to overcome all with what is going on and all of that process that your brain is going through, but it is possible with some practice. So as I mentioned, my brain is relying on a strategy that I've used several times that has worked for me, because your brain is trying to be really efficient. It kind of takes shortcuts and it's like oh, yeah, I recognize the situation. He's the reaction, almost like loading a computer program like, Oh, yep, you've asked for this program. Here it is. And then off, you go down the little train track that tells you where to go for this reaction. And it's like, there's no way to stop it. It's, it's a shortcut. And it's like a habit that you've developed as a way of dealing with this situation. So the first thing that you can do to work on changing your ability to react to situations is to stop and notice what's going on for you in the situation. You can actually ask yourself what's going on here for me? And you might think about what's going on for the other person. Or you might think about what am I not noticing? What am I missing in the situation? And what am I failing to perceive here? And I'll be honest with you, it might not work the first few times, the first few times, you might just be developing, like an awareness of how you're reacting. So you might have a bit of like, almost an out of body experience, where it's like you're watching yourself reacting to the situation, and you can't do anything about it. But over time, that awareness will develop into an ability to recognize what's happening really early in the piece, oh, he is that strategy loading up on my little computer, inside my brain, and I'm about to go down this train track, but hang on, what's happening here? What's going on? For the other person? What am I missing? Or what am I not perceiving in this situation. And starting with that awareness, really gives you a chance to practice really getting hold of that reaction over and over again. And by taking control of that initial reaction, you're taking it from, like a habit or an a subconscious and unconscious reaction to the situation, to being able to make a choice about how you want to respond. So if the kids start saying, like, Oh, I forgot my shoes, you know, when you're halfway to the car, and where you might just go into your, into your strategy and deliver your usual reaction to that situation, you can stop and think, Okay, what's happening here? This can be a really quick process, because your brain is really efficient. You can think, hang on, am I very reacting? Yes, it's just shoes totally fine, kind of take a deep breath, and allow that reaction to dissipate. Because what happens when we're triggered is we go into this, like fight or flight mode. And then we find it really difficult to make logical decisions. So as soon as that kind of reaction goes off, you're flooded with adrenaline and your body's like preparing to run away or have a fight about this situation. And while all those things are happening, you can't really perceive to the best of your ability. So sometimes that stuffing process and asking questions, maybe taking a couple of deep breaths, will actually allow your brain to return to logical function. That process is called the amygdala hijack, which is when your the survival part of your brain completely hijacks your electrical system, and kind of takes over and then all you can think about is reacting to the situation. So if you wait for the hijack to pass in your logical brain, your prefrontal cortex to come back into action, and it can kind of take over and logically work out what is the best way to react to this situation, that will give you more control over the situation. And as you continue to work on these processes, you can actually work on changing more steps in the strategy and being even more conscious and choosing what outcome you want. And you'll notice that you are actually able to choose how you react and choose whether you get angry or whether you can remain calm with practice. I would love to know how you go with implementing this. If you've got a situation where you do find that you're reacting inappropriately or overreacting. Give this strategy go take a couple of deep breaths wait the seven seconds. And I would love to know how you go putting this into practice. So you can hit me up on Instagram at the underscore mind set underscore corner and let me know how you go send me a message. I would love to hear how you go implementing this in your life. So the tip for today is to stop and ask yourself what's happening here? What's happening for the other person and what might I be missing?
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
